Software lets you manipulate 3D objects in a 2D image

You wouldn’t know from watching CSI, but data that is not included in a picture can’t be magically “enhanced” into existence. So you really have to wonder how a few PhD students from Carnegie Mellon University managed to make boring old 2D photos come to life with 3D effects. It’s actually done with a clever type of photo editing software that turns 2D objects into 3D ones.

If you take a photograph of something, that thing exists in real life–you can find out what’s on the other side of it. That’s the essence of the 3D manipulations seen in the video demo below. The software uses 3D models of the object to construct a 3D model based on the 2D version in the photo. It doesn’t have to be the exact same object, though. A cab of the right make and model always looks pretty much the same, so a stock 3D model of a cab is used to make the one in the photo fly around.

This process doesn’t require any special photography equipment, just the software and a little patience. The 3D model can be matched automatically to the object’s shape, but some tweaking will be necessary to get a perfect break from the 2D background.

The tools built at Carnegie Mellon attempt to replicate the lighting and color of the original image on the simulated 3D surface, but minor differences in the model and the actual object pictured are sometimes unavoidable. The success of editing a photo in this way obviously depends on the 3D models available and how complicated the original image is.

If you want to get your hands on this program, you’re (sort of) in luck. The source code is licensed under GPL and there are OSX executables available for download. There’s no Windows or Linux version, and it’s not really a consumer-ready application.